NewEnglandFilm.com

Through this remote locale pass a handful of eccentric folk: a horny waitress, waiting (appropriately) for her boyfriend, a Welsh trucker, to arrive for his monthly tumble in the hay; a middle-aged high school teacher making a getaway with his blonde bombshell girlfriend (one of his students, naturally); his hysterical, pistol-packing wife in hot pursuit; and a melancholy young woman toting a rather large Buddha. Did I forget to mention the escaped convict? Fresh from a recent kill, he’s hitched a ride to the pitstop with the Welsh trucker–and by a remarkable coincidence, he’s a dead ringer for the schoolteacher. The neighborhood cops (one of whom has the hots for our waiting waitress) are on the lookout.

And smack-dab in the thick of it all is the inexplicable Max, our hero, an odd sort sporting a recently shaved head, stuck in this mess because of car trouble but eager to get to LA as fast as possible to begin his filmmaking career. He lurks on the fringes of the action, filming it of course, occasionally muttering a few words of broken English.

It’s not a high-class cast of characters, to be sure. And "Pitstop: or How Max Got to Hollywood" is not a high-class movie. That’s okay–it doesn’t aim to be. The film flips from character to character as the separate stories slowly get more and more entwined, with more plot twists and couple swaps than an episode of "Love Boat." And Max is always there, camera in hand, recording the mayhem whenever he can.

But what about Max? Is the movie-going public destined to sit through movie after movie featuring a film within the film? Most likely they will. Since so much of life’s "experience" these days occurs secondhand, seen through a screen, such meta-filmic elements (to the chagrin of aging traditionalists everywhere) reflect a now-essential part of contemporary life. Here, however, Max and his camera seem a bit gimmicky. Max, unusual for no apparent reason, is hardly the artist seeking unexpected beauty through the fresh eyes of the lens, as in "American Beauty"; nor is the camera vital to the conception of the film, as in "The Blair Witch Project." At best, perhaps, Max’s character functions as a camp version of the filmmaker-within-a-film–gawking, voyeuristic, barely capable of functioning in real life, believing himself significant yet existing almost as an afterthought.

But this is beside the point, for "Pitstop" aims primarily to entertain. There are no deep philosophical or sociological inquiries here, no subtle exploration of character. (As I write this review, I find myself unable to remember these misfits’ names, and, frankly, it hardly matters.) Indeed, the characters here seem to exist only to be played with for writer/director Dennis Lanson’s amusement. Luckily, the movie is amusing for the audience, too–often enough to make it worth seeing. A few weaknesses should be mentioned: The tone of the film wavers at times, as if Lanson and his cast try to play it serious at times despite the absurdity of the material. What’s more, the casting could have been better; the schoolteacher’s floozy looks too old to be a teenage student, while the waitress seems young for her 39 years. Nevertheless, "Pitstop" provides more than a few chuckles. It’ll send you home smiling.